crossover/paraells or bootcamp?best?

This topic has been thoroughly discussed in the boot camp forums.

The answer is wholly dependant on what you intend to use Windows for.
Boot Camp has large advantages over Parallels in certain circumstances, such as gaming and using resource intensive Windows applications.

Tell us what your intentions are and we can guide you towards the best solution for your needs.

I can't speak specifically to the application you've mentioned, but there have been a few issues with people getting mics and headsets to work well with Parallels. Do a search for "headset mic" on the Parallels Desktop for Mac Forum and you'll find a number of hits and some ways around the problems people have had.

My gut feeling is that either Parallels or Boot Camp will work equally well for what you are thinking of. If you do go with Parallels you can always try the 15-day trial key before buying (nothing lost if it doesn't work). Also, Parallels and Boot Camp coexist with each other well, so you can have both and eventually choose whichever is working best for you. Having both just chews up some extra disk space as you have two installations of Windows, etc.

Intel Mini 1.66 GHz, Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)
Vista and XP running under Parallels

paton

Out of interest, did you get Lyceum to work with Parallels?
I've run my girlfriend's various TMA CD-ROMs from the OU under Parallels / WinXP on an iMac Core2duo, but now she needs Lyceum too. Not sure how / whether to proceed with this. Any/all pointers grateully received.